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Posts Tagged ‘trending’

How a Blogging Duo Is Changing Fashion Photography With Animated Cinemagraphs

05 Oct



A cinemagraph created during New York Fashion Week last month.

Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg comprise the rising star duo behind the wildly popular Tumblr From Me To You.

(One might argue, given recent campaigns with Ralph Lauren and Juicy Couture, a photo editorial in The New York Times and an appearance in Lucky Magazine, that their stars have already risen, but we firmly believe the best is yet to come.)

Beck, 28, and Burg, 30, combine an unusual set of talents that have attracted not only the notice of the Tumblr community, but also of a growing roster of brands and editors.

Beck is the photographer and the blog’s primary model and stylist. She leverages her pinup figure, makeup and hair-styling skills, and a wardrobe of vintage finds to create spreads that connote the glamor of American icons such as Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.

Burg is the more technical of the two, leading the blog’s design and the creation of their signature (and trademark-pending) cinemagraphs — animated GIF images that look like moving photos. He also — from what I observed in meetings with one of their clients and their manager, Karen Robinovitz of DBA — heads up business relations, jotting down notes on clients’ expectations and deadlines for deliverables.

The two met in 2006 through mutual friends, and are now engaged. Before they began working together at the beginning of this year, Beck — who says that from the age of 13, photography is “all [she's] ever done, and all [she's] ever wanted to do” — was still shooting in film. Burg encouraged her to purchase her first digital camera with which to begin blogging and tweeting, and more recently, to begin uploading her iPhone snapshots to Instagram. (“I’m obsessed,” she discloses.) He also designed her Tumblr.

Burg had, for some time, been taking frames from Saturday Night Live clips and turning elements into looping animations on a still background. These became the prototypes for the their first cinemagraph “Les Tendrils,” which was published on Feb. 13, 2011.


Beck and Burg’s first cinemagraph, “Les Tendrils,” published on February 13, 2011.

After they published their first cinemagraphs, Beck recalls that no one wanted to book her for photographs anymore. They wanted her to create “that moving thing you do” — which is when they decided to coin the term “cinemagraph.” The two felt they needed the term because what they created was unlike an animated GIF.

“There’s a cinematic quality to it … like a living photograph. It’s always a photograph first and foremost,” says Beck.


How They Create Cinemagraphs






Jamie Beck.





Model Coca Rocha wearing Oscar de la Renta.





A rainy evening in Savannah, Georgia.





A cappuccino.





Fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.





Inside the Brooklyn apartment of a couple who designs jewelery.





A row of swaying lights.





A swinging necklace.





A summer concert.





A cinemagraph for Juicy Couture.





A cinemagraph for designer Katie Ermilio's lookbook.





A handbag swings on a Manhattan rooftop.





Backstage at Prabal Gurung.





Backstage at Prabal Gurung.





Photographers Scott Schuman and Garance Dore at Burberry's S/S 2012 collection show.

Beck and Burg never know for sure if a cinemagraph is going to work out, which makes it difficult when brands hire the pair. “We can be 90% sure,” Beck discloses. “When we shoot from the street or at [New York] Fashion Week, and I can’t control the environment, it’s never a guarantee.”

To create a cinemagraph, Burg and Beck focus on animating one object: a swinging chain, for instance, or a spoon moving around the rim of a coffee cup. In a studio setting, the pair will employ pinpoint light to create sparkle, and fans to tousle hair and garments. Beck directs the camera, a Canon D5 Mark II, while Burg controls the props that produce the animation.

Beck and Burg will then import and edit the files in Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. The number of frames they use depends on the medium. For Gilt Taste‘s website, they were able to create much longer loops and embed their work on the site using HTML5 video layers. A cinemagraph that appears on their Tumblr will end up being between 25 and 100 frames; a banner ad is even more constrained.

Shooting a cinemagraph doesn’t take any more time than shooting a photo, roughly speaking, but the editing process generally takes a day, says Burg.

Both Beck and Burg expressed frustrations with the limitations of connections speeds and file sizes, which necessitate the use of GIF files, and consequently reduce the quality. Beck expects that in a year they will able to distribute cinemagraphs that look so lifelike that you could touch them.


At a test shoot for Juicy Couture in August.


The Added Value of an Audience



A cinemagraph commissioned by Juicy Couture.

It’s not just Beck’s and Burg’s photography and cinemagraphs that make them appealing to brands. The two have also amassed a large built-in audience — a series of six cinemagraphs they did featuring model Coca Rocha in Oscar de la Renta gowns merited around 55,000 notes and more than 2,000,000 impressions, Tumblr fashion director Rich Tong revealed at a conference in Paris earlier this month. That exposure makes the duo a valuable distribution force.

Take a recent campaign Beck and Burg did for fashion brand Juicy Couture. They were commissioned to create a series of cinemagraphs using Juicy Couture products, some of which appeared as banner ads across a range of fashion sites, and some of which — like the one above — appeared solely on their own Tumblr, racking upwards of 15,000 notes (reblogs and likes) apiece.

“The great thing about Jamie and Kevin is that they’re not just artists, but they also have a distribution portal,” says Robinovitz. “Why would you just hire a photographer when you can hire a photographer who has a place to share photos… [and] a hungry audience?”

Robinovitz’s question was rhetorical, of course, but also a good one to pose.

In a recent interview, Scott Schuman, the photographer behind street style blog The Sartorialist, says that he earns somewhere between a quarter of a million and half a million dollars per year running ads on his blog, in addition to the assignments it has earned him. Will photographers who don’t blog and market themselves online stand as much of a chance? And will blog coverage be written into assignment contracts?

Beck says that while she has not negotiated blog coverage into any of her contracts directly, it is discussed with brands during an assignment — namely, she says, to figure out timing and what she’s allowed to post. Brands don’t control what goes on Tumblr, and she is careful to only accept assignments true to her aesthetic.

“If I am going to work with somebody, it has to be part of my life, something I want to share,” Beck explains. “I can be hired to make banner ads, but I want people to see the whole 360, and hopefully my readers will be amused or inspired.”

More About: coca rocha, fashion, features, jamie beck, juicy couture, kevin burg, trending, tumblr

For more Dev & Design coverage:


 
 

How a Blogging Duo Is Changing Fashion Photography With Animated Cinemagraphs

05 Oct



A cinemagraph created during New York Fashion Week last month.

Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg comprise the rising star duo behind the wildly popular Tumblr From Me To You.

(One might argue, given recent campaigns with Ralph Lauren and Juicy Couture, a photo editorial in The New York Times and an appearance in Lucky Magazine, that their stars have already risen, but we firmly believe the best is yet to come.)

Beck, 28, and Burg, 30, combine an unusual set of talents that have attracted not only the notice of the Tumblr community, but also of a growing roster of brands and editors.

Beck is the photographer and the blog’s primary model and stylist. She leverages her pinup figure, makeup and hair-styling skills, and a wardrobe of vintage finds to create spreads that connote the glamor of American icons such as Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.

Burg is the more technical of the two, leading the blog’s design and the creation of their signature (and trademark-pending) cinemagraphs — animated GIF images that look like moving photos. He also — from what I observed in meetings with one of their clients and their manager, Karen Robinovitz of DBA — heads up business relations, jotting down notes on clients’ expectations and deadlines for deliverables.

The two met in 2006 through mutual friends, and are now engaged. Before they began working together at the beginning of this year, Beck — who says that from the age of 13, photography is “all [she's] ever done, and all [she's] ever wanted to do” — was still shooting in film. Burg encouraged her to purchase her first digital camera with which to begin blogging and tweeting, and more recently, to begin uploading her iPhone snapshots to Instagram. (“I’m obsessed,” she discloses.) He also designed her Tumblr.

Burg had, for some time, been taking frames from Saturday Night Live clips and turning elements into looping animations on a still background. These became the prototypes for the their first cinemagraph “Les Tendrils,” which was published on Feb. 13, 2011.


Beck and Burg’s first cinemagraph, “Les Tendrils,” published on February 13, 2011.

After they published their first cinemagraphs, Beck recalls that no one wanted to book her for photographs anymore. They wanted her to create “that moving thing you do” — which is when they decided to coin the term “cinemagraph.” The two felt they needed the term because what they created was unlike an animated GIF.

“There’s a cinematic quality to it … like a living photograph. It’s always a photograph first and foremost,” says Beck.


How They Create Cinemagraphs






Jamie Beck.





Model Coca Rocha wearing Oscar de la Renta.





A rainy evening in Savannah, Georgia.





A cappuccino.





Fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.





Inside the Brooklyn apartment of a couple who designs jewelery.





A row of swaying lights.





A swinging necklace.





A summer concert.





A cinemagraph for Juicy Couture.





A cinemagraph for designer Katie Ermilio's lookbook.





A handbag swings on a Manhattan rooftop.





Backstage at Prabal Gurung.





Backstage at Prabal Gurung.





Photographers Scott Schuman and Garance Dore at Burberry's S/S 2012 collection show.

Beck and Burg never know for sure if a cinemagraph is going to work out, which makes it difficult when brands hire the pair. “We can be 90% sure,” Beck discloses. “When we shoot from the street or at [New York] Fashion Week, and I can’t control the environment, it’s never a guarantee.”

To create a cinemagraph, Burg and Beck focus on animating one object: a swinging chain, for instance, or a spoon moving around the rim of a coffee cup. In a studio setting, the pair will employ pinpoint light to create sparkle, and fans to tousle hair and garments. Beck directs the camera, a Canon D5 Mark II, while Burg controls the props that produce the animation.

Beck and Burg will then import and edit the files in Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. The number of frames they use depends on the medium. For Gilt Taste‘s website, they were able to create much longer loops and embed their work on the site using HTML5 video layers. A cinemagraph that appears on their Tumblr will end up being between 25 and 100 frames; a banner ad is even more constrained.

Shooting a cinemagraph doesn’t take any more time than shooting a photo, roughly speaking, but the editing process generally takes a day, says Burg.

Both Beck and Burg expressed frustrations with the limitations of connections speeds and file sizes, which necessitate the use of GIF files, and consequently reduce the quality. Beck expects that in a year they will able to distribute cinemagraphs that look so lifelike that you could touch them.


At a test shoot for Juicy Couture in August.


The Added Value of an Audience



A cinemagraph commissioned by Juicy Couture.

It’s not just Beck’s and Burg’s photography and cinemagraphs that make them appealing to brands. The two have also amassed a large built-in audience — a series of six cinemagraphs they did featuring model Coca Rocha in Oscar de la Renta gowns merited around 55,000 notes and more than 2,000,000 impressions, Tumblr fashion director Rich Tong revealed at a conference in Paris earlier this month. That exposure makes the duo a valuable distribution force.

Take a recent campaign Beck and Burg did for fashion brand Juicy Couture. They were commissioned to create a series of cinemagraphs using Juicy Couture products, some of which appeared as banner ads across a range of fashion sites, and some of which — like the one above — appeared solely on their own Tumblr, racking upwards of 15,000 notes (reblogs and likes) apiece.

“The great thing about Jamie and Kevin is that they’re not just artists, but they also have a distribution portal,” says Robinovitz. “Why would you just hire a photographer when you can hire a photographer who has a place to share photos… [and] a hungry audience?”

Robinovitz’s question was rhetorical, of course, but also a good one to pose.

In a recent interview, Scott Schuman, the photographer behind street style blog The Sartorialist, says that he earns somewhere between a quarter of a million and half a million dollars per year running ads on his blog, in addition to the assignments it has earned him. Will photographers who don’t blog and market themselves online stand as much of a chance? And will blog coverage be written into assignment contracts?

Beck says that while she has not negotiated blog coverage into any of her contracts directly, it is discussed with brands during an assignment — namely, she says, to figure out timing and what she’s allowed to post. Brands don’t control what goes on Tumblr, and she is careful to only accept assignments true to her aesthetic.

“If I am going to work with somebody, it has to be part of my life, something I want to share,” Beck explains. “I can be hired to make banner ads, but I want people to see the whole 360, and hopefully my readers will be amused or inspired.”

More About: coca rocha, fashion, features, jamie beck, juicy couture, kevin burg, trending, tumblr

For more Dev & Design coverage:


 
 

Could Kickstarter Be Better Than Government Grants for Artists?

17 Jun


Artist Molly Crabapple has just been given $17,000 to lock herself in a paper-covered room for five days and make art until the walls are covered.

But that sum didn’t come from the National Endowment for the Arts or a wealthy patron; Crabapple, like many in her subversive art-making shoes, turned to Kickstarter to find funding for the stunt.

In her Kickstarter proposal, she outlined the basic premise of the project, dubbed “Molly Crabapple’s Week in Hell.” Anyone who donated a dollar to the effort would get to watch a live stream of the whole five-day shebang. Anyone who pledged $10 or more would get to name an animal for inclusion in the artwork; donations of $20 or more would get an actual piece of the ink-filled paper sent to them. And backers who fronted $1,000 or more would get an absinthe-infused lunch with the artist.

Crabapple set a $4,500 fundraising goal; so far, the total raised is $17,000 — enough to make a short film about the project, which Crabapple says will debut online shortly after Crabapple’s Week in Hell wraps.



Why Art Needs the Web


This is a project that Crabapple says could never have existed without the Internet.

“I mean, before the Internet, I could have gotten a room and markers,” she told Mashable in an email. “But funding it? Pre-selling an entire body of yet-to-be-created-art in an alternative space? Even the logistics of finding the space and gathering my staff would have been infinitely harder offline”

Historically, the kinds of projects that do best on Kickstarter are actually film and music. Over the past two years, these two categories have accounted for more than $32.7 million in fundraising — more than every other category combined.

Crabapple says the Week in Hell is her third Kickstarter project. She did a Kickstarter proposal last year to help fund SketchyCon, a gathering of organizers for Crabapple’s unique life drawing events, Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School. And she did ker second Kickstarter project just a couple months ago to fund a stop-motion paper puppet film.

“An artist like me (ie a poxy illustrator who dropped out of school) has basically no chance with the grant system, and Kickstarter has been amazing for helping me bring my most ambitious projects to life,” said Crabapple.


Why Grants Don’t Work


While entrepreneurship projects such as the ill-fated Diaspora do exist on Kickstarter, they get relatively little attention on the site when compared to the overwhelming popularity of the arts. For artists who seek funds to further their dreams, the crowdfunding model of Kickstarter is something of a godsend. Gone are the lengthy, difficult grant application processes and the endless pitching to would-be patrons.

As Crabapple told us, “I once sat through the introductory session for applying for a Brooklyn Artists Grant. In between the forms filled out in 8-plicate, having to have a nonprofit organization sponsor you, and the fact that the grant was forbidden from covering the entire cost of the project, I figured it was probably just easier to earn the money.

“A Kickstarter is populist and fast, where a grant is elitist and foot-dragging.”

Crabapple said she was surprised, though, that the project got so much interest and so many pledges.

“Week in Hell is a deeply personal project, and there’s always a risk of those coming off as horrifically wanky. I posted it with some trepidation on Sunday at midnight, and woke up to find it funded. In my fever dreams I never would have imagined such an incredibly warm, generous response.”

Keep an eye out for the Week in Hell event, as well as subsequent photos and film, to take place from September 3 through 8 in a secret location in Manhattan.

Image courtesy of Facebook, TheLegion

More About: funding, fundraising, grants, kickstarter, Molly Crabapple, National Endowment for the arts, NEA, trending

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Tumblr Now Has More Blogs Than WordPress.com

15 Jun


According to their respective websites, 4-year-old microblogging platform Tumblr now hosts more blogs than 8-year-old WordPress.com.

In January, Tumblr had more than 7 million individual blogs. At the time of this writing, the total blog ticker on its site read about three times that at 20,873,182 — beating out WordPress.com’s current count by about 85,000 blogs.

WordPress.com’s count doesn’t include sites that people host themselves with the open source software via WordPress.org, but given that the hosted service had about a four-year headstart, surpassing it in number is still an impressive feat for Tumblr.

Clearly a flood of individuals have been signing up for Tumblr lately. But top companies in entertainment and news and fashion have also recently launched Tumblr blogs. They’re using the platform in a very different way than they use WordPress.com.

WordPress.com has long hosted the main sites of top brands such as the National Football League, CNN and TED. Most Tumblr blogs function much more like another social media presence — something like a cross between websites and Facebook profiles.

More About: trending, tumblr, WordPress

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Jerry Seinfeld Puts His 30 Years of Comedy Online

06 May


Jerry Seinfeld has launched a website, which serves as a warehouse for pretty much everything he’s ever performed.

JerrySeinfeld.com went live Friday morning with three short comedy clips — “The Fattest Man in the World” from The Tonight Show in 1981, “Do the Horses Know They’re Racing?” from a 1988 HBO special and “No Room in the Newspaper” from The Tonight Show in 1990.

The site is taking an unusual approach to offering the content by running just three new clips per day. The clips, which range from 30 seconds to two minutes, will be available for only 24 hours and then will be replaced with three new ones.

On the site, Seinfeld explains he’s offering the site to young would-be comedians. “Somewhere out there are 10-year-olds just waiting to get hooked on this strange pursuit,” he writes. “This is for them.”

Seinfeld’s straight-to-the-fans media model comes after Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park launched South Park Digital Studios, a joint venture between the two and Comedy Central in 2007 that made all their work available online. Meanwhile, the model of treating comedy bits like songs by cutting them into bite-sized digital pieces has been employed by Sirius XM’s various comedy channels for some time. And just this week, Pandora also added 10,000 such bits to its libraries.

More About: jerry seinfeld, media, pandora, South Park, trending

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Facebook To Buy Skype? [REPORT]

04 May


Two reliable sources say Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is talking to Skype about either buying the company or forming a joint venture, according to Reuters.

One of the sources said Facebook is considering a buyout of Skype at a price of between $3 billion and $4 billion.

The other source told Reuters the deal won’t be a purchase by Facebook but rather a joint venture between Facebook and Skype.

Skype and Facebook are no strangers. In October, when Skype released its version 5.0 software for Windows, it included a Facebook tab that let users chat or call Facebook friends via Skype, right from the Facebook newsfeed that can be viewed from within the Skype application.

Facebook isn’t the only one chasing Skype. One of the sources talking to Reuters added that Google was also in “early talks” with Skype about a joint venture.

Update: When we contacted Skype Wednesday night, the company responded, “As a practical matter, we avoid commenting on rumor and speculation.”

Let us know in the comments what you think of this deal and who stands to gain the most.

More About: buyout, facebook, joint venture, Skype, trending, Zuckerberg

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Web Design Evolution: Two Decades of Innovation [INFOGRAPHIC]

17 Apr


The web has come a long way since Tim Berners-Lee created the first website way back in 1991. Here’s an infographic that takes you on a tour of web design, starting with those humble beginnings, and bringing you all the way up to the present day.

It’s like getting into a time machine, where the tremendous progress design has made on the World Wide Web over the past two decades is all laid out in front of you.

Follow along this extensively researched infographic from KISSmetrics, showing us exactly how far we’ve come from those early days where wide pages of text with hyperlinks in between ruled the roost. Do you remember when an animated .gif graphic of a letter folding up and flying into an envelope was seen as the highest of technology? We’re starting to feel nostalgic.

Please note: This graphic is so huge, we had to shrink it to fit our format, but if you’re having a hard time reading it, click the graphic for an enlargement.

Graphic courtesy KISSmetrics

More About: infographic, kissmetrics, Tim Berners-Lee, trending, web design, Web Design evolution

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Our World, Slowed Down 100 Times [VIDEO]

12 Feb

Come with us into a world where everything is slowed down more than 100 times. Thanks to an expert videographer and editor named Tom Guilmette and a Vision Research Phantom Flex camera, we get a peek into an alternative universe — the same one we inhabit, but where the temporal element has been distorted in a variety of ways.

According to Guilmette on his Vimeo site:

“I was working a gig in Vegas with a brand new Phantom Flex high speed digital cinema camera. I had to try it out. In fact, I never did go to bed that night. I opened up a wormhole shooting at 2,564 frames per second.”

Most video ambles by at somewhere between 24 and 30 frames per second when it’s shot and viewed, but when you play back this 2,564 frame-per-second video at the usual speed of 24 or 30fps, things are slowed down so much, you can see things you’d never be able to detect in real time.

I’m always amazed at the way extreme slow motion techniques can turn everyday occurrences into mind-bending art. Beyond that, I’m impressed with the way Guilmette makes his video so entertaining with convincing sound effects, music and sharp editing, further playing with speed differences to create an astonishing timescape.

Want to shoot one of these yourself? Get yourself a Phantom Flex camera, available for rental for $3000 a day.

More About: Digital Cinema, Slow Motion, Tom Guilmette, trending, video, Vision Research Phantom Flex camera

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40% of All Tweets Come From Mobile

07 Jan


At CES, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo revealed that 40% of all tweets come from mobile devices, demonstrating mobile’s increasing importance to the social media company.

On stage at the AllThingsD event at CES, Costolo bantered with Kara Swisher about why Twitter is at CES, its plans to become simpler and more consistent across platforms, and the impact of its celebrity users.

During the course of the conversation, Swisher asked Costolo which devices and operating systems are the most important to Twitter’s future and its health. Costolo responded by saying that 40% of all tweets are now composed on mobile devices, up from around 20% to 25% a year ago.

Twitter mobile usage exploded with the release of the company’s official iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry apps. The mobile website, SMS, Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for BlackBerry are the most popular Twitter apps after the company’s website.

Costolo also revealed that Twitter now has 350 employees, 100 of whom were hired just recently in Q4 2010.

More About: AllThingsD, CES, CES 2011, dick costolo, Kara Swisher, trending, twitter

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NASA Engineer Shows YouTube “Best of the Best” Shuttle Videos

11 Dec


Matt Melis, a longtime NASA engineer, has take to the ‘Tube to show off what he calls “the best of the best” imagery from shuttle launches, including high-definition video

Melis has been in the launch analysis game for quite some time. His 45-minute tribute to space shuttle launches is incredibly educational and a fascinating watch for fans of space programs.

You’ll get to hear NASA engineers explain every imaginable detail of a shuttle launch as footage from the ground and from the shuttles themselves show what goes into the first phase of a successful space mission. You’ll get to see launches for STS-114, STS-117, and STS-124 missions.

In short, if you’re really into space stuff, this YouTube video is the director’s commentary of your dreams.

“Photographic documentation of a space shuttle launch plays a critical role in the engineering analysis and evaluation process that takes place during each and every mission,” Melis writes on the YouTube video page.

“Motion and still images enable shuttle engineers to visually identify off-nominal events and conditions requiring corrective action to ensure mission safety and success… Rendered in the highest definition possible, this production is a tribute to the dozens of men and women of the shuttle imaging team and the 30 years of achievement of the Space Shuttle Program.”

Melis has been at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, for many years. He was part of the ballistics team that analyzed the Columbia launch accident, for example.

Here’s the full video. Let us know what you think in the comments.


Reviews: YouTube

More About: NASA, Science, shuttle launch, space, space shuttle, trending, youtube

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